Director Jodie Foster on Men and Failure

I know I’m watching a good movie when the story in my head runs out and I have to let the movie tell its own story. That’s how “Money Monster” impressed me watching it this evening.

The premise of the plot is known before you sit down in your cushy seat—disgruntled investor holds the TV studio and host hostage for a bad stock tip when he loses his savings—but how it will pan out is the most important part of any story: the writer’s POV, the theme, the director’s concept.

What I enjoyed was the realization that even as I was watching this film, the changes in plot pulled me in so many directions, that I had to let go and allow the film to deliver on its own.

There’s an emotional surprise every few minutes, an important part of this thriller genre. While we’re still in the first act, George Clooney‘s character, the “monster” of the TV show, “Money Monster,” comes up with a brilliant idea—to change the value of the stock in real-time, thus giving Jack O’Connell’s character—who’s taken the TV studio hostage because he lost his savings on said same stock—a ray of hope that the stock he bought will regain its value. For just a page of script, Clooney makes an authentic appeal to the viewers tuned into the live show, and the stock begins to rise, just a point. I’m thinking, wow, live crowdsourcing. What if this was how all stocks worked, how far away from reality is this? And just as that gleam in the actor’s eye sparkles, the stock drops.

Not everyone laughed, but I did. “I was interested in this idea of men and failure,” director Jodie Foster has said of this project. In that moment, when Clooney understands that the world wouldn’t pay to see him live, his character is allowed to fail, and that sets up the very interesting dynamic of what ends up essentially being a buddy movie—between Clooney and O’Connell—showcasing the theme of men’s failure and how women have to be the cool-headed, brave, fixers. Enter Julia Roberts‘ character, the show’s producer who whispers so intimately in Clooney’s ear via a tiny wireless speaker, telling him to breathe, giving him direction, “producing [his] survival,” Foster puts it.

And just when you think men and the women who rescue them is the theme, in comes a new woman character who is anything but cool-headed and supportive of the man in her life. Wait, there’s two.

The film is full of small, quiet moments that are dramatic in their own right. When Roberts clears the studio, when Lenny Venito (Lenny the cameraman), silently returns behind the camera, and other moments that come and go, spinning the story as quick as you can spin a camera on a studio set.

In an interview with Foster, she mentioned that were it not for the mega-Hollywood actors attached to the script, she might have produced the movie via a smaller screen. But there are reasons to watch this type of “real” thriller in a movie theater, and that is the reaction of the audience. The story is about the audience as much as the main players. Not only in our ability to relate to each character, and not only mirrored in the scenes of audiences watching the hostage crisis live on TV, but also in the theater itself. Watching an event as a group, we share the tense situation, the moments of levity, which gives us a chance to let our own minds change and react together to the flashing images on a screen.